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Jack is one of those comics that instantly heralds praise simply because it is grim, gritty, and in-your-face. One you begin to strip away the shock value, however, it begins to fall apart. Jack caught my attention after seeing it mentioned on forums elsewhere. I read through the backlog of stories to what was the present at the time, and have peeked in on it on occasion. The comic definitely has a certain amount of interest because of the topics it deals with. It's interesting to see someone attempt to depict the mechanics and buerocracy behind the operations of Heaven and Hell. But, where movies such as "What Dreams May Come" or shows like "Dead Like Me," which approach similar topics, utilize their sets of "rules" for the afterlife to explore how characters can either learn to operate within those rules, or where the powers of the human heart can defy time, space, and even death... Hopkins' uses his view of Heaven and Hell mostly as an excuse to draw a lot of blood, guts, and monsters that look like rejects from the Silent Hill games.
Hopkins is... well, we'll say a competent artist. He makes effective use of black and white, generally balancing out the page. When he goes into large splash pages, things tend to get overly dark, or overly light, feeling more like a page what was copied with the lightness or darkness set too high on the Xerox machine. The character designs are interesting, and the grittiness of Hopkins' style works well in some ways. In other ways, however, Hopkins' work looks very unrefined. The linework makes everyone, as I have come to describe it, look like they are comprised of crumpled grocery bags. When you follow the archives of the comic, you'll be struck by how, in all of this time, the artist doesn't seem to have improved significantly in terms of line quality or basic anatomy.
I also have to take issue with Hopkins' coloring methods. Most of the color pages appear to have been colored with either colored pencil or, at times, crayon and then scanned. The individual marks are often visible, and backgrounds often look like they were colored on a rough surface, the texture of the table top or whatever messing up the medium's ability to mark the page. This may be an attempt to make it "gritty," but the effect makes it simply messy, and leaves you wondering if there are any plans for Jack to be portrayed in elbow macaroni glued on cardboard. Hopkins' would fare better using more "grown-up" coloring methods, such as Prisma markers, brush inks, or even digital coloring.
Hopkins gets big kudos for the diversity of his character designs, however. Most "furry" comics utilize a handful of excessively used creatures, such as foxes, wolves, and felines. Hopkins' limited artistic ability sometimes makes it difficult to tell just what a character is, but usually conveys it well enough to see such interesting creatures as rhinos, reptiles and amphibians, and insects. Hopkins' also has a good eye for utilizing detail in his work, such as how inhabitants of Hell all have tiny pupils, while the living and inhabitants of Heaven have normal pupils.
The characters in Jack are a mixed bag. Some are interesting and well-developed, others are simply there to screw with. The character of Jack, himself, is interesting, as you follow his development as a reaper but also as a tortured soul trying to figure out why so much suffering is necessary. While you get the sense that Jack, the comic, is mostly an excuse for Hopkins to rend flesh and play God, you also get the sense that Jack, the character, is Hopkins' way of questioning his own faith through questioning the rules set forth in the comic. Jack, the character, hints at the idea that Hopkins, himself, is not quite comfortable with the dogma of his faith, but feels intimidated by the possible consequences of that very questioning.
There is much that is left unanswered about Jack, but hinted at through the story arcs and shorts. This is both good and bad. Your interest is drawn into the stories as you are tantalized with tidbits of information about why Jack, himself, is in Hell and also the reaper of souls. Hopkins' does a good job of teasing the reader with enough information to get a piece of the puzzle, but not enough to decide whether it's part of a barn, a field, or one of the side pieces. Unfortunately, this information is so hideously dragged out that, over time, the reader fails to care about the strip. As I mentioned, I peek in on Jack from time to time, but I really take on interest in it until such time that everything is pretty well divulged. You almost get the sense that Hopkins' plans to do Jack for the rest of his life, rather than moving on to other projects. As such, you find yourself losing interest, as it appears all of the questions about Jack may never be answered.
A lot of the other characters are a combination. Hopkins' does a good job of grounding his living.. though often doomed.. characters in every day activities so that we relate to them. We often see enough of their daily routines that we identify on some level with them enough to realize how fragile life can be once the story kicks in gear, and they are killed off. Still, the characters are often simply placed there as cannon fodder. The circumstances behind their death and judgement quickly become so rigid and stagnant that the reader cannot feel sorry for them. As they stare, wide eyed with copious amounts of blue globs streaming from their eyes at Jack as he explains to them why dear old Dave has decided they're to be jerked around because they hung themselves.. one mostly just looks at them thinking, "Dumbass."
Hopkins' also makes excessive use of his friends' characters in the comic. While cameos of other artists and acquaintances' characters in furry comics are standard fare.. almost used like currency as cigarettes would be in prison... it leaves many readers feeling on the outside, as the "furry guest stars" swap inside jokes about things that obviously had relevance on a MUCK or in another comic, but leave the readers on the outside of Hopkins' clique scratching their heads.
As you make your way through the archives, Jack's stories start out appearing unique. Upon first introductions, Jack feels like an edgy comic that dares to tackle some pretty heavy concepts. As you read further, though, the stories run together and become formulaic. They typically consist of a start which features "a day in the life of" our victim. Within a page or two, some horrible tragedy befalls them, or it becomes clear they are in a suicidal funk. Pretty soon, they are staring wide-eyed at Jack with about half of their head missing while he sighs heavily and, once again.. and again.. and again.. takes them to Hell with heavy heart, trying to explain to them what minute thing they may have done in their life.. such as stepping on a bug or looking at someone's boobs.. that merits them an eternity in Hell. Occasionally, there are stories that do actually manage to tug at your heartstrings, such as the cancer researcher that disappoints his girlfriend (or was it wife?) in her dying moments because he felt trapped between saving children, or her. Still, in cases like this, the featured character's choices often seem pretty clear cut. However, their chosen actions, which, of course, lead them to be cast into eternal damnation so that the show may go on, are often counter-intuitive if not downright moronic. Characters are often portrayed with a clear-cut sense of right and wrong... up until its time to decide whether or not to do something that will damn them. When that point occurs, most of Hopkins' characters toss everything they've learned in life right out of a 30-story window... typically followed by themselves.
To be certain, parts of life aren't pretty. But the bleak and depressing world of Jack... and we're talking about the world of the living here, not Hello... dwells excessivly on those parts that aren't pretty. In the world of Jack, the leading cause of death seems to be random acts of gun-toting crazies and freak accidents, such as a wristwatch exploding and driving the quartz lens through your brain. As such, Jack comes off as having very little footing in the real world. Death in the comic is typically in the form of sensationalistic events, such as shootings, suicides, and horrendous accidents. Quieter causes, such as illness or old age, are rarely touched on. It seems as if no comic is complete without a lovingly-rendered depiction of someone's brainpan being smeared across a wall. In this way, Jack comes off as little more than gore-porn. As weak stories are used to string sex scenes together in regular porn, repetitive stories are ground through the mill as little more than an excuse for the author to depict gore ad nauseum. I certainly have no problem with gore. But, its excessive use in the comic quickly becomes trite. The same stories with less obvious gore would become much stronger. For example, in the most recent arc, a young lad blows his brains out because of feelings of guilt over events that happened in one of the original arcs. (I do give credit to Hopkins for revisiting a previous story from another angle, though.) In one page, we see the character place the gun under his chin. The last frame shows nothing more than a spray of blood. This is sufficiently gory, and conveys the brutality of the act. Once in the afterlife, however, the character is sporting sufficiently moist entry and exit wounds. In one swoop, Hopkins takes an touchingly sad and brutal act, and makes it merely the vehicle for which he can engage in a bit of creative autoeroticism for his gore fetish.
The attention to detail and fixation on the acts of violence and rape make you wonder of Hopkins' is the kind that drives around in a van with a roll of duct tape and a scalpel in the glove compartment.. just in case he ever decides to make the leap from comics to the real world.
The final thing that detracts from the comic is, as others have mentioned, the excessively anal-retentive set of rules by which the characters are judged. Hopkins' bases his rules for Heaven and Hell on the fundamental concepts of right and wrong, but does it in such a stringent way that any minor infraction gets you irrevocably cast into the fiery pits. While this may be seen as a plot device so that Jack has that much more to question about God's love, it comes off more like the rulings of a deity that simply is too busy playing the latest Rainbow Six or Splinter Cell game to bother weighing the facts surrounding one's life. This makes the comic seem like the work of any of your most devout Bible-thumpers, and puts one in mind of the works of Jack Chick. In looking over Chick's site for comparative works, I was struck by the resemblance between http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0037/0037_01.asp and many of the stories in Jack. Since you don't see Heaven much in the strip, one has to wonder of it's simply Farrago, Central, and couple of others playing Scrabble while they wait for someone... ANYONE... to be deemed worthy enough by the heavenly gamer dude to break up the boredom. One gets the sense that there is plenty of property available in heaven, as there's no room for Muslims, Buddhists, or even Jews in Hopkins' view of the afterlife.
Such anal-retentiveness also comes across as hypocritical, when denizens of Heaven are able to construct a personal paradise wherein they can destroy Redwall Abbey (based on Brian Jacques' novels) or where the innocent passer-through can be potentially raped in a personal Heaven designed to lure someone's boyfriend out of Hell into taking a second stab at going back to the world of the living and gaining Hopkins' own seal of approval.
At the beginning, Jack looks like an edgy, gritty comic that dares to go deeper than most online comics. And, in some ways, it is. Hopkins' has some very interesting ideas, and would make a great addition to a team of brain-stormers brewing up a movie such as What Dreams May Come or Dogma. But, on his own, Hopkins' has rendered a repetitive, anal-retentive set of stories offered as little more than a thinly-veiled vehicle for his apparent true love, blood, guts and rape. The art appears gritty, but, a cruise through the archives will show it is the work of an artist with potential, but little development. The grounding Hopkins' style has in the Sonic the Hedgehog imagery seems to be a juxtaposition between the grim inevitability of death, and the toony expressionism of online comics. Again, on further inspection, however, it's just the work of a one-trick pony trying to use his limited ability to have a go at something deeper. There are things in Jack that draw you in out of sheer curiosity for their origins.. but the sloth-like pace at which the comic moves draws the core stories out far too long, losing all but the most ardent of readers.
In short, Jack is a comic that, at first, appears to be deep, gritty, and in-your-face. Further exploration, however, reveals that it is mostly just an excuse to draw blood, guts and rape that simply pretends to be deep, gritty, and in-your-face. |
| Review by LadyGojira Mon Mar 15 2004 12:54 PM |
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